Archives for March 2009

Year Overview and Postmortem

Hi Everybody,

So the end of the build season and competition has arrived. Even though the final result was not what we expected, we were still a great team and we have improved a lot compared to last year. We have made significant improvements in terms of communication, membership, dedication, engineering, organization, spirit and much much more. This year was a great year and we should all be proud of our hard work.

However, like in all things, we can still improve a great deal. This is why every year, we have an event called the Postmortem. This means that we will all sit down and have an organized discussion (and we will try to keep the digression to a minimum) where we will go over the whole year. What went well? What did not? What should we improve on? What can we do to be more interactive with other teams? Be more recognized in FIRST? You get the general idea. This is also a time when we go over the organization of the club. Next year’s leaders will NOT be announced at that time, but we will discuss possible position openings and how the organization is possibly going to work next year.

We will also discuss future plan of action. We will go over what we will do in the next three-four months before we leave for summer vacation, and most of all, what you the members would like to do more of in Robotics. What would you like to learn? Do? Do you have any specific projects you would like to work at? etc…

We will also try to take another team picture because not everybody was at the competition and also because we could not get a hold of some people at the competition itself. So put on your team t-shirts if you have them. If you don’t we can hand the out on Wednesday or maybe a bit earlier too.

Thanks for participating this year, and we will see you on Wednesday! Please try to come for this is one of the most important meetings we will have before next year.

TO PEOPLE GOING TO HOTELS

There is one extra form I want you all to fill out. This is to guarantee that you will not bring drugs, alcohol, etc and bla bla bla. It however, is very important, and says that you won’t sue my dad if you do something stupid or if you lose one of your items.

robotics_hotel12

I added it as a word 2003 document in case some people don’t have ’07. I’ll print out extras just in case, but you’ll still need your parent’s signature.

FORMS DUE!

All of the forms to attend the competition are due by Wednesday before the competition (march 25th)!!!

You must fill out the: prearranged absence form for IHS and the FIRST conscent form. If you are planning on getting a ride to the competition from another parent, please fill the parent driver form.

Also, respond to this thread if you will be driving people to the competition, or if you will be driven by someone other than your parents. -Hugo

Competition Social

Every year, the FRC organisers try to create a fun event near the competition’s area for the team members to participate in. This year, the social is at the Pacific Science Center. Kevin Ross sent us the following email:

Hello,

Friday evening March 27th, 2009 from 6pm to around 10pm, we have options for your teams entertainment. We have an organized team social at the Pacific Science Center. The Pacific Science Center is a facility on the same grounds as Key Arena in Seattle. It is about a 1500 foot walk from Key Arena to the PacSci.

We have secured access to the Eames IMAX theater, the Laserium, and also the Boeing IMAX theater.  There will only be about 1200 tickets available for this event.

All of these events are on the Seattle Center property. Food is available at the Center House food court, or any one of a number of surrounding area restaurants. You will be responsible for your own food.

We will be showing two Laserium shows, two IMAX films, and have 400 tickets to the new animated movie Monsters vs Aliens. The least expensive ticket allows your team to hang out at the Pacific Science Centers Boeing Lobby where we will have an area for the teams to socialize, plus see 1 laser show and 1 IMAX movie in the EAMES theater. The higher price ticket gets you into Monsters vs Aliens 3D plus 1 additional show.

Doors to the PacSci will open around 6pm for FIRST students. The schedule looks like:

Laser Shows: 6:15 pm, 7:00 pm, 7:45 pm, 8:30 pm (30 minute shows)

IMAX Movies: 6:15 pm, 7:15 pm, 8:15 pm, 9:15 pm (45 minute shows)

Monsters vs Aliens: 7:30pm  www.monstersvsaliens.com (about 100 minutes)

We have use of the Boeing IMAX lobby area from 6pm to 9pm. This will be a good place for the students to mix.

Cost: Admission to the team social will be $7.00 per person, which allows you to attend any of the laser and IMAX movies. If you are one of the 400 people who wish to attend the Monsters vs Aliens, there is an additional $5 per person charge ($12 per person total). The ticket agency adds a little to this price, so the real prices are $8.17 and $13.29. These are the advanced purchase prices. If you wait until the day of, the prices will be $9 and $14 respectively.

It is highly probably that this event will sell out. We apologize for that, but it is difficult to find places for more than 1200 students to hang out!

Another option if you are looking is the Experience Music Project has an event called EMP After Hours. You can find information about this event at http://www.empsfm.org/programs/index.asp?categoryID=249 . FIRST and FIRSTWA are not associated with this event. It is an event open to the public.

Advanced tickets are on sale now via Brown Paper Tickets (an online ticket vendor). All tickets are will call, and will be distributed on Friday of the event in the pit area. Advanced ticket sales are until about 4pm PST on Thursday, March 26th 2009. For this event, we can only handle credit cards for advanced sales, and cash for onsite sales. We WILL NOT process purchase orders.

To purchase tickets, visit http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/60323 

Feel free to contact me with questions.

Kevin

FRC Microsoft Seattle Regional Chairmam

If you can come, please respond to this post.

Washington Vex Competition 09

1899 Vex Team Picture

1899 Vex Team Picture

Congrats to the Vex team for their amazing accomplishments yesterday at the 2009 Washington Vex Competition! We finished the preliminaries with a 4-2 win record, ending in 5th place. We also managed to achieve 3rd place in the driver challenge with a score of 48.

During the finalist rounds, Team 420 “Mousebot”, 3rd place, picked us as an alliance partner. We accepted along with Team 690. Unfortunately, in our first match, Mousebot had some technical difficulties and was disabled during the round, so we lost. Mousebot fixed their technical problems, but 690 was subbed in for round two. Unfortunately, they lost and our alliance was eliminated.

However, we did surprisingly well for a first-year Vex team with only two weeks to build a robot. I’d like to point out some of the things we did really well. First, we had presets for our arm. That means that our drivers didn’t have to waste time getting the arm height correct for each goal – the robot assisted the driver to score. This is a good use of automation to help perform tasks and resulted in less time to score. Also, we had a few hours of driver practice at Exothermic’s field, which gave us an edge over some teams which did less driving.

Also, we got lots of good scouting practice. Over the course of 6 hours or so, we managed to obtain over 1700 words of scouting data! We used a good system and will definitely do that during FRC.

Vex team, Dennis will be leading the disassembly of Ctrl-C. We’ll most likely keep the base so that it will become a towing bot for our trailer.

Friday Vex Meeting

4-7 at LexisNexis – Vex meeting – we’ll be driving, coding, and nothing else. Mandatory for drivers, optional for everyone else. See you there!

Vex Competition

Your hard work has paid off! On Saturday, March 14th, we’ll be going to Redmond High School (17272 NE 104th St, Redmond, WA) to compete in the Seattle Regional for Vex.

If you’re not in our Vex team, I still highly encourage you to come and watch! The most exciting time of the day will be around 2:30-5 if you can only make a few hours.

Vex team, to show our appreciation to Exothermic Robotics, we’ll be staying to help with setup and cleanup. Please try to make this if possible. You can use these hours for volunteer hours if you need it for anything.

Breakfast & Lunch:

Redmond High will be selling breakfast and lunch (and giving it for free to volunteers). Bring your own lunch or bring money!

Schedule

7:00 – 8:30: Setup

8:30-5:30: Competition

5:30-7:00: Clean-up

Menu

Oatmeal $1 for a cup
Donuts $1
Bagels & cream cheese $1
Coffee $1
Muffins $2
Tea $1

Lunch:
Pizza $3 slice/2 for $5 ($14 for whole pizza) cheese or pepperoni
Water $1 bottle
Soft Drinks $1 can
Jamba Juice Smoothies $2/$4
Cup of noodles $1

Vex Schedule

Thanks for everyone who has shown up for the Wednesday meeting today. Vex is doing well. The rest of our meetings (besides the Wednesday meeting) will be held with the Exothermic Robotics at LexisNexis, 2445 140th Ave NE, Suite B200, Bellevue, WA 98005. Here’s our schedule:

  • Saturday: 10-6
  • Sunday: 12-6
  • Tuesday: 4-7
  • Wednesday: 5-9
  • Thursday: 4-9

I can help provide rides after school. You do not have to be present at all of these meetings, but the more the merrier. Over the weekend, we will make our arm perfected, modify the robot so that there can be two drivers, polish up some rough areas, and get some programming done for the sensors. Over the weekdays, we will do some extensive driving to get experience, strategizing, and make design modifications as necessary. It should be fairly relaxing.

This will culminate in our competition at Redmond High on Saturday, March 14th. I’ll post more info about that soon. Thanks for the great work, team!

Parent Meeting – Very Important

Hi guys,

To help in the planning for the field trip, and to make sure everyone is on the same page, we will be having a parent meeting on Tuesday March 10th from 7PM to 7:30 PM. The meeting will take place in Mr.Cooney’s room, number 1808. All parents and team members are invited and are HIGHLY ENCOURAGED to attend. We will discuss hotels, what the competition is, what we need from the students and also from the parents in order to go to the competition.

You should all have received a form at the meeting on Wednesday which also includes the agenda of the competition. If you did not receive it, please go to Mr. Cooney and ask him for it.

See you at the meeting! And bring your parents please

Competition and Hotels

photo-18.jpg

Hey guys. Since the general email didn’t work very well, I would like to remind all those that did not write to me about going to the competition to do so ASAP so that we may know some accurate data. If you have already told me, you don’t have to again.

The competition is march 26-28 (Thursday-Saturday) at Key Arena and we would like to know if you want to stay at a hotel or not. Please send an email to ma-fontenelle@hotmail.com and tell me. Officers too, please.

Thanks,

Marc-Antoine